Troubled Heart

I was wrong in my last post when I wrote that I had like 20-30 pages to go in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Turned out I had like 100 pages to go but hustle I did and I finished the last few pages today. It was really really good, vividly written, even though the few pages at the beginning weren't that captivating and the last few pages at the end wasn't so easy to read. The last few pages had nothing to do with the story but more about thoughts from the main character, like things I write here in this blog, but his thoughts were much intelligent I suppose. Anyway the title of this post is in relation to the main character of the book, Theo Decker. The story began kinda at the end and then it flashbacked into the beginning of when Theo's life changed at 13 years old. He was with his mom in a museum when there's a bomb attack. His mom died and he ended up getting out of the museum with a small painting. The story then continued to when he had to live with his estranged father in Vegas, made friend with a Russian boy at school, Boris. His story had accompanied me throughout many lunches alone when I quickly finished my food and checked in on him. I was sad at how his life turned with Boris, they got high and stole things, pretty much wasted their potential especially since both of them seemed to be smart. Then Theo's dad died and he decided to go back to New York and the story progressed and we met adult Theo. He did more drugs and became not a really good person because he cheated on his business. Towards the ending another big trigger in his life was when he met Boris again and they had to deal with the painting. Boris had became a criminal whom you perhaps don't really hate much because he just came across as fun and loyal and he was really loyal through and through so that's admirable. I had my disapproval about Boris but the ending reminded me that Theo had also been a dishonest person. He's perhaps more hidden in his illegal dealing but he and Boris were both criminal. Reading how Theo's life progressed, I had sadness about how he was becoming and also because he's so troubled. I guess I'm a sucker for people with a very heavy heart because though it's not the same situation, I can understand the sadness, despair, restlessness. We're kindred spirit in a way. There are other things happening in the book, but I don't want to spoil it for you. I really want to see this made into a tv series because then it won't be contained to 2 hours and such if it's a film. Boris would be a really interesting character. I would love to see this gregarious character comes alive, though I cannot picture anyone playing him. I imagine someone like Nicholas Hoult for the role of Theo. Anyways, so that made it 7 books this year, did more than the mission of 5 books, well done me :D

Went to watch Seventh Son today. Went to watch it knowing nothing about the premise except for the fact that Prince Caspian (Narnia reference there, actor's name is Ben Barnes) was in it. He looked good with shorter hair. Turned out Jon Snow (Game of Thrones reference, actor's name is Kit Harington) was in it too. Too bad he died like within 5 minutes of the starting of the movie. Yeah, Prince Caspian is the main character here. I found it to be quite boring despite of the many famous people in it. I was sleepy watching it but it could be because of the McDonald's hot cakes I had for breakfast. McDonald's breakfast always make me sleepy. It's annoying that there aren't many good movies to watch in this period especially since I have a 2-week break from Japanese classes. I should be consolidating my notes and finished up my homework and yet I haven't done any of that. I found myself to be really struggling to keep my head afloat in Japanese classes :(

This end of the year is of course not a happy one for Indonesia. It's really sad what happened with AirAsia 8501. Yesterday news that some wreckage and dead bodies were found gave me mix feeling. Relieved that there's clarity and it's not like being in the unknown like MH 370, but I was feeling really sad because it's such a tragic news. It's really really sad. Hearing the story of some of the passengers, it's really sad. This also makes me feel rather ungrateful that I don't think much about flying. It's so random and can happen to anyone. Around 7 planes were in the area when the plane found trouble and this was the plane that didn't make it. The flight path and the area where the plane got into trouble is similar to the flight path from Jakarta to Singapore, the flight that I've taken the most. I have been safe in all my travels so far and yet very often I think nothing of it and didn't thank God for the protection. It's very very sad and this AirAsia flight hit me harder than what happened to MH 370 or MH 7. On a side note: the Indonesian search and rescue team seemed to be doing a good job. They seem to be very organized and capable. It must be a difficult job for them especially with the bad weather, but they seem to be going strong and so committed in their effort and that's good to see.

So it's the last day of 2014. As usual a new year freaks me out because I'll be older. I reckon this week will still be okay. The last 2 weeks have been pretty okay, yes okay even though in the last post I sounded sad. I'm not looking forward for next week. Told my cousin about it and she said with the new year we should have new drive and spirit. I don't know where she gets her positivity from. She was born 9 days before me, so we have the same chinese sign and we're both pisces, but our outlook in life is so different. What's wrong with me?!? Okay enough sad depressing ranting. Chanced upon this song like maybe last week in Radio Rai and been hearing it a few times since. When I listened more to the lyrics, it's like a sign for me to be brave especially when I feel rather scared on doing something. I'm building up that courage and I think I will make this song as the first song in the soundtrack playlist for the plan I hope to execute. Some parts of the lyrics that spoke to me:
There's a place I go to where no one knows me
It's not lonely
It's a necessary thing
It's a place I made up
Find out what I'm made of
...

:) eKa @ 8:50:00 PM • 0 comments

Not The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Christmas eve. Was feeling rather sad this morning because I was feeling lonely. They say the holidays are actually the time where many people get more depressed. Totally true. In the end, because I asked (still I am sad that no one asked me instead) I had lunch today with Gascoigne (where he dropped me a news that I couldn't wrap my head around) and will have lunch tomorrow with la Gioia. Now suddenly I feel like I want to be alone, but I will still go to lunch tomorrow because la Gioia has kindly said yes. I'm such an anti social that I myself do find it annoying. How has your Christmas been? I'm sure it's more cheery than mine.

Had a bad week last week which made me scream FUCK a lot, to myself. I had enough self control to not run to FaceBook and start ranting. I did tweet though and wondered if all the shitty things are like punishments. Today was still bad too that I wanted to scream fuck you! Obviously the bad things made me feel even worse today. For now, I am safe in my room. It's raining outside. If I think about how this year has like only a week left, I'm sinking deeper into the black hole of depression. Yes, it's not really the most wonderful time of the year for me right now. I did manage to come up with a plan for next year. Even managed to calculate the cost. Right now I'm wondering if I should ask people to execute the plan with me, but again I wonder why I just don't have people to ask me rather than me asking them and then get flat out rejected. This sounds very pathetic, yes? I know it is, I hope you appreciate how honest and open I am in writing this. Today Gascoigne bet that I would still be here in 5 years time and if he's right, I should pay him S$100. Being 37 and still in Singapore and single, that is utterly tragic and depressing. Please God, please the universe, don't let it be so. Please, please, PLEASE!!!

On movie news. Managed to watch a few things. Watched Paddington which I thought was okay. Love the colours. Hugh Bonneville is in it and all the while watching him, I felt rather weird seeing Lord Grantham speaking and behaving the way his character in Paddington does. It was the same watching Michelle Dockery in Non-Stop, so weird to see Lady Mary working. I think I will feel weird watching all actors of Downton Abbey in a more contemporary role. Anyway, yeah Paddington wasn't bad. So want to buy all its merchandise. Then yesterday, I went to watch Annie. The review for this wasn't good, but I quite enjoyed it. If I'd been alone in the cinema, I would most probably have sung along out loud. Quvenzhané Wallis was great. I watched her in Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was a rather weird movie and I think I found her to be great there too. I think I managed to watch a few other movies, one that stood up for me was Men, Women & Children which I thought to be really good. I read somewhere that it's not as good as the book, but I found this movie to be really good. Speaking of book, I was convinced that I'll finish The Goldfinch before December ends and yet with 1 week to go, I still have like 20-30 pages to go. I have to say it's a really good book and since we're towards the ending now, some things have happened, things that made me gasp out loud and had my jaw drop in public! People who saw me must have thought I'm so weird. Sometimes though I feel like I have the invisibility cloak on that people don't notice me or ask me to do things. Anyway The Goldfinch, right now the ending doesn't seem to be a happy one, but I am trying to be hopeful. I have been so absorbed in the book and the imagery has been pretty vivid in my head and I think this would make a good tv miniseries. I kinda don't want it to be condensed for a purpose of a movie. I'll talk more about the book when I finish it. I will hustle and get this done before this year ends.

Not much else to write because my life is that empty. Merry Christmas Everyone!

:) eKa @ 7:10:00 PM • 0 comments

Good Grief, It's the Last Month of 2014!

I'm not one who knows what the date of each day is. Today it took me awhile when someone told me that she and her family moved in to a new place on December 1. In my head, it's like December is still a concept in the future, not realizing we are already in December. The more I think about it, I can feel that I'm gonna freak out more if I let the thoughts of having this year end and a new one start soon to occupy my head. Freaking out that will lead to depression because I will think about me getting older and then I'll end up examining my life and what I have accomplished in life and where I am now. Where I am now is pretty much where I have been all these past years. It's not a stretch to say I am stuck and let's not go there, let's not talk about this, because it's just gonna make me upset.

Alright, let's talk about a few mundane things. Watched a few things. The Walking Dead had its mid season finale this week and I was pretty sad about the death that happened, sigh. As for the cinema, well I really don't have the time to go anymore. Watched Fury which was better than I expected. Shia LaBeouf is a really talented actor, but too bad all the antics are clouding his talent. I thought it's a shame, but some of the weird things he did, he brought it upon himself. I also watched The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and felt kinda annoyed with Katniss in it because I felt she's kinda weak and whiny. I also thought Philip Seymour Hoffman was great and how sad it is that he tragically died.

On other news, last week found out that my credit card was blocked due to security reasons. Got the news in a text and I was told to call a number immediately, which I didn't. My lack of concern was perhaps worrying, but I was thinking that the card was going to expire in January, I would have to get a new card anyway, so I didn't care much about it. The next morning, the bank called me. Turned out someone had tried to use the card to buy something online. Since it's an online transaction, we don't know from which country this is coming from, but the transaction was in USD. I was pretty shocked hearing the news that I don't remember how much the transaction was. Either way, it failed and the bank quickly blocked the card. The lady from the bank just wanted to confirm it's not me trying to buy some vitamins online (the thief is health conscious?) and she told me that I would get a new card mailed to me in the next few days. I'm thankful that there is system in place to detect this kinda thing and thankful that DBS did a good job in protecting me. Still, it's very shocking that such thing could happen. I am assuming this is from some evil staff who took credit card information from legit places where I have used my credit card. All and all, there were extra prayer that night thanking God for the protection.

Got a new passport. Confused and disappointed about it because I was expecting to get a biometric passport and turned out it isn't :'( Can only hope that at the very least, it's machine readable. I had a big problem getting a usable finger print scan when I was applying for it. I was thinking if I should write about what happened here, but I chickened out and wrote it in my diary instead. I guess I'm not ready yet to talk about my condition, a condition whose name I finally found out in these past few weeks after googling on how to deal with it on a particular situation. This led to finding out that there are people like me and while it's comforting to find out there are others who know exactly how it feels like and reading the same things I have been dealing with, it's also kinda sad because somehow it's all official now that there's something wrong with me. Wrong is perhaps too sad of a word to use, perhaps not perfect is better, but no one is physically perfect, no? Also since I have been living with this my whole life, it's strange that finding out the exact medical term for it caused me to feel sad. With or without the name, I have what I have and it's unfortunately a really annoying condition to have, especially at important times. Anyways, I talk too much about it already.

So new passport, not biometric, super disappointed. I googled a lot about this and I wonder if the applying process in Indonesia (at least Jakarta) will be a more integrated effort. The thing is, Indonesia rolled out e-ID card in the past few years, which means our new ID card has our biometric information. It was a very thorough attempt, not only there's finger print scan but there's iris scan. The moronic thing they did though was to put an expiry date on the ID card. It's like saying there's an expiry date on being an Indonesian citizen. I thought it's a waste of resource. I think one should only change their ID if there are major changes in the data, like your picture doesn't match you anymore. That is what Singapore does and if you change residence, they just stick a new address, so there's no wastage. Unless the reason they're doing it is some benevolent reasons that the government would like to check on its citizen and see how they are doing. It's as ridiculous as I write it no? Anyways, if they can connect these data and the passport data, then the country would have a more integrated and meaningful data of its citizens. I did my passport in the embassy and for sure they're releasing these passports without linking back to the citizen's data in Indonesia. They didn't ask for my Indonesian ID number, instead they asked for a Singapore one. The chances of me being the only Eka Buntoro Dewi Putri in Indonesia or in the world right now is very high, so it can be easy to identify me in case of emergency, terrorism activity, or whatnot, but still I would hope that they're making more of an effort to get all these data be centralized, like if they do a search on a passport number, all the information about the person, their ID number, name, address, biometric data can be retrieved. Right now I don't think that is the case. Is it weird that I would like such a system? Pretty sure that there are people in places like America who would be terrified with such a system and think it's an invasion of privacy. Anyway, hopefully the new ministries can be smart about this, especially after all the spending on this.

Moving on, went to Gardens by the Bay after collecting my passport yesterday. They had their christmas decoration on and I feel like it's getting harder and harder for me to be amused anymore. There were teddy bears and christmas trees such as this with small teddy bears decorating it.

Then there's a fake fireplace with teddy bears in christmas stockings. The fireplace part is actually a tv showing crackling fire.

Then this is new for me and I found it to be very disturbing. It's from a French sculptor and it's called Les Voyageurs (The Travellers) if I'm not mistaken. It's gifted from Changi airport to the garden and the sculpture is to represents this family going to Changi after making memories in the gardens. Maybe it's because I just watched The Walking Dead the day before, but I found it to be really disturbing with parts of the people missing and they're not actually looking happy. I was so surprised to see this and I wonder if I am the only one thinking that it can give nightmares. Seriously, are kids okay seeing this?

Moving to the center area, there are little houses with little snowman decoration, teddy bear santa, and fake white snow which I didn't dare touch because I don't know what they are.



Towards the exit, there are two last teddy bears. By the way, glad to see the rose garden section back though there are still not a lot of roses in it.

I decided that I would come back again when it's darker, so I went out to look around the areas and ended up having dinner. After ice cream, it was dark enough for the lights to be switched on and it does make the flower dome look more mesmerizing than in the daylight. Below is the center area with the houses and the light tower where there are actually lighted flying reindeers on some parts of it, parts of the reindeers pulling Teddy Santa's sleigh.



Then I went outside to the super tree areas where the Spalliera is. Copying this from the website, Spalliera: A crown of lights, some 17m tall and 31m wide. Enter and be enthralled.

I was enthralled for like a minute or so. There was to be a snowy blizzard thing at 7:30 pm so everyone was waiting for it. By snow, it's foam, just like everywhere else where this is promised in Singapore. Can't they throw shaved ice instead? Also maybe it will work better if the machines were actually propped up high instead of shooting it from the ground. Blizzard is overstating it. It was very light and it's over in 10 minutes. I was amused for like 30 seconds. There were little kids who seemed to like it, but I think the general feel is not that of high excitement and wonder. There were actually a lot of crisscrossing wires to light up all these lights and the foam settling on them made them more visible.

That's about it peeps. For pictures, please go here.

:) eKa @ 4:55:00 PM • 0 comments

Indonesia - Danau Tempe & Bantimurung

The next day we were to leave Tana Toraja. We could drive the full 8 hours and go straight to airport and take the flight back to Jakarta but the itinerary I chose for this trip put a break in Sengkang where we would be going to Lake Tempe and stay the night. It was like 4-6 hours drive from Toraja to Sengkang and again I took motion sickness pill so I was asleep in many parts of the journey which was stupid since I missed taking a final look at Toraja landscape. My mom who is ever so quickly to fall asleep surprisingly rarely slept in the car ride. There are so many long drive in this trip and after what felt like pretty long, we made a stop at the shop overlooking Gunung Nona (Buttu Kabobong) again, the same place we had our tea break on day 1. Mom and my aunt took the chance to shop at the pregnant lady whose place they shopped in in the first day. Mom feeling that we (or she to be more exact) have been deprived of adequate fruits for far too long bought a big papaya and cut it on the spot and that papaya was like gone within 15 minutes. I only got 1 piece. When I had papaya back in Jakarta, it made me realized that the papayas we had in Toraja really weren't amazing. Now I also feel the papayas here in Singapore are not as nice as what I had in Jakarta. Anyway Mom and my aunt had been asking what the nice local produce are, but they don't seem to have any, though my aunt and brother did buy some Torajan coffee. I don't know if those were nice, since I don't drink coffee. We got it from a roaster who didn't roast a whole lot of beans and we're shown how they sort the coffee beans manually between the good ones to sell and the bad ones that they use for their personal consumption.

So anyway, after that stop overlooking Buttu Kabobong, we continued with our drive, more and more away from the mountains. Long drive, it's getting hotter and hotter and finally we reached Sengkang and found a place to have lunch. Mom decided we should just go to the lake straight and after that go to the hotel instead of the other around. Following the itinerary, we would be taking a boat to explore the lake. Since we were earlier than we should have been, we had to wait awhile in the car by the bridge waiting for the boatman. It was really really hot there in Sengkang and I started to feel if this was a good idea after all, especially after looking the river we're at that is not looking beautiful. It's like in between I want to do this but I don't know if this is a good idea and my aunt also seemed to be losing interest too. Eventually the fisherman came and on we got on the small boat (motorized canoe) that has 4 seats exactly for us. The fisherman just sat by the end. We started by traversing the river with houses on either sides and some boats and really it's not looking amazing and there's a thought in my head that my mom and aunt would complain that it's a waste of time and we're wasting away in the hot sun.
At one point our boat stopped by the bank and my mom thought that it's time to get off and explore the fishing village but I wasn't sure because I wasn't aware of this. It turned out we're changing fisherman. Turned out this older man knew the way to the house we're supposed to go. At this point, I didn't know we're even stopping at a house. So anyway, the landscape by the river started to change. No more houses, but fields of corns on the right and unidentified vegetables plant on the left. As I got splashes of water, I was thinking of flesh eating bacteria! I am fine though, perhaps there's no such thing in that river, but really the dark murky water was too icky and we just couldn't imagine how these people can use the water to bath, play, and perhaps look for clams and such. By the way, since it's the dry season the water is actually not very high. Maybe it's less than 1 m. After some time in the river, it opened out to the vast space of the lake, where we started to see a few floating houses.
In the lake, the landscape changes with many of these poles / sticks forming some sort of a triangle. There were also a lot of these plants which in Indonesian we called eceng gondok. My mother theorized that the purpose of the poles was so that the plants can grow on them and beautify the lake while our fisherman said that the poles are used to catch fish under it. I'm not sure how that works and I am still intrigued what these poles are for.
Then we stopped at this floating house in what I would say middle of nowhere. To this day, I am still confused and curious on how the fisherman knows how to get to wherever he wants to go. It's not like there's a street marker in a lake. I don't know how he does that, everything looked the same to me. There were 2 other houses near this house. We're a bit confused when we're told to get off. Apparently this is what they do to tourists, tell them to get off at a local's house and just rest and relax a bit. Apparently the owner of the house we're in is not at home because her daughter or son of grandchild is sick so she's at the doctor and we're there at her empty house. Our fisherman told us that sometime foreign tourists would come and stay the night at this type of house, to which we could only say "aah ... bule ..." (aaah ... foreigners). My brother saw the guest book and indeed there were some people there and we found out that they were served fried banana which we obviously also wanted. So our fisherman went to the house some metres away, he just used a paddle to push the boat and I think the depth of the lake in our area is really not very high, maybe knee length but the turbidity was indeed awful. The house itself was very simple like the picture above. We only sat at the front of the house. I took a peek at the inside where it's a big open space for sleeping and entertaining and behind is the kitchen.

So we sat there waiting for our fried banana looking at the view, absorbing this unique experience. On another house, they're drying fish, which we think make for salted fish. Our fisherman told us that when it's the rainy season or when the water level is higher, the houses are pushed to a different place, so their location is not always the same. Again I wonder how the fisherman knows where the location of the house is and how to get there. As we sat there, another boat with foreign tourists with 2 toddlers arrived at the other house. My mom commented on how amazing is that that foreigners often take their young kids on pretty "hard trip" (for Indonesian standard) such as this with their young kids without much fuss. Yes, Asians can be really spoilt with their kids. Then another 2 boats dropped their tourists at our house, a couple from the Netherlands and 2 ladies from France. I am most impressed with the french-speaking Indonesian guide because he speaks much better french than me. We talked a bit with him. He too was bringing the ladies from Toraja and he commented about there are many guides with many language skills in Toraja, but only 2 could speak Chinese, something that he said it's quite a shame and he's working on learning that too. Anyways, we finished our 2 plates of bananas and mom said let's just go to give more space for these people. Later on my aunt told us that when she went to the kitchen all the fishermen were congregating and making fried banana for us tourists. It was truly a different experience as I told the Dutch tourist :) It was late afternoon when we left and the sun was bright but not too hot and I thought the lake looked more beautiful.
We passed a piece of dry land where there were quite a few birds standing and we saw more and more birds as we entered the river. I'm not sure what birds they were, the inside of their bodies were white but perhaps their wings were black. At one point there were many of them and they're feeding in the river. We don't know what they caught, but sometime they dropped off their catch. Maybe it was little fish.
By the time we reached the bridge where our driver was waiting, the sun was setting and it was a big bright orange, too bad I have no picture of it. I think it's a good thing we left earlier making us not arrived too late or too dark, but I supposed going to the lake later would be great too as it wouldn't be so hot. Anyways, so we went to our hotel. It seemed to be the only hotel there is in Lake Tempe. It has the same name as me, Pondok Eka. I was bracing for it to be so simple and worse than the one we had in Toraja, but it turned out the hotel is undergoing renovation and we got newly built rooms in level 3 which are really really really nice. Maybe the only downside of this hotel is it doesn't have a nice view and no wifi. By the way our Toraja hotel has a good wifi and it made me think that very often we think of Indonesia as backwards but there are some good developments going on.

The next day was the day where we're flying back to Jakarta. Our driver was always ready early and my family is also an early riser type so we set off even earlier than the planned 8 am. First we stopped at this house where the ladies of the house did traditional silk weaving. I found it strange that our driver brought us to this house, normally people would be taken to a proper store no? I wonder if it's because we're so early or because he knows these people are poor and maybe something would strike the fancy of my mom and aunt and these people get to make some money, because I really think our driver did not get any commission from things bought here. The house is really rundown, a poor house, but I saw that their 2 weaving boards (I don't know what these are called) are very well maintained. After much looking and bargaining, my aunt and mom bought a few scarfs. I think the silk is not real silk, more like a mixture or something. Anyways, here I began to understand that sometime when my mom and aunt buy things, often it is to help the people who sell it. Yes, they may want some things but they may also end up buying more because it could help these people who really do not look rich and may really need the money. Some part of it is also perhaps because our family make money by selling things so they understand how hard it is to sell something and it's like making good karma by buying things from other people, you hope that many people will buy from you.

This also makes me think how domestic tourists and perhaps to a greater extend regional tourists is important in Indonesia. Yes it's good to have all the big money tourists like the Europeans coming in, but let's face it some of them are backpackers who have low spending power and may benefit only the cheap hotels and guides. The rich ones coming may not be able to spend much because some of them may continue their trip to other parts of Indonesia like Bali, like a group I met in Buttu Kabobong, so they may not be keen on buying many things because it'll be difficult to bring around. So it's the Indonesians tourists like my mom and aunt who can bring more money to the people who sell the fabrics, the t-shirts, the strange snacks, the passion fruits syrup, and all other trinkets - the overlooked places which may only interest Indonesians who's only a short flight away to bring all these things as souvenirs. So I began to see the spending of my mom and my aunt not as silly but as good for the local economy.

Anyways, it's another 4-6 hours drive from Sengkang to Makassar. We made a stop somewhere after my mom saw many signs of this local snack and was curious and we got off to one roadside shop and got some dange which is made from glutinous rice and some palm sugar. It was interesting watching the lady made it. She burned the mould to heat it up and then stuffed the ingredients into the mould, waited for awhile for it to set and took it out. Another nice thing travelling with my mom and aunt, without them, I wouldn't be tasting all these different food. Did I mention how I love that they always stock up on snacks? Yeah, it's great that they love to buy things. Anyway we stopped for lunch at Pare Pare and we also passed the coast with the beautiful blue sea. Saw many houses on stilts. Some of them were so rundown and even oblique that I thought the people living in these houses must be very poor. Maybe they are, the ones who are living in houses that are like horizontally oblique they can collapse anytime. My mom thinks these people are just preserving tradition and there are stilts houses which look very nice with ceramic tiles for the staircases to the house.

Our flight was 5 pm something and in the itinerary we have time to go to Bantimurung where there's a waterfall. After a long drive, we made it. Ticket price is differentiated between the local (25,000 IDR / ~ 2.6 USD) and foreigners (225,000 IDR / ~ 24 USD). While I think it's kinda okay to differentiate prices, I thought the price for foreigners are too steep for what's inside and I would have liked it if the differences is not that jarring. We're in the dry season so the waterfall is not that full with only these 3 streams. I have seen pictures where the waterfall is fuller.
My aunt being nice agreed to pay for photos taken by a worker there. This guy and his friend accompanied us as we walked up the stairs and walked to see the river providing water for the waterfall. Kinda creepy if you ask me, but my mom and aunt were (or acted) cool about it. He explained that there's not much water because it's the dry season but during the rainy season the river would get flooded and it can get really scary. People may not be allowed to play at the waterfall. There's nothing much to see here actually that we didn't spend much time there, that's why I felt the ticket price for the foreigners are too high. We're approached by a boy who's selling a set of key chains with butterfly in it. Oh yeah, this park is famous for its butterfly too but I only saw perhaps at most 5. The guy said that the butterfly season is in May when there are more water too. When I was there, everything was just too dry. Anyways, the boy was like telling my mom and aunt he's selling it cheap and outside it will not be as cheap. I don't enjoy being peddled and I thought if you have paid to enter something it should free you from sellers approaching you to sell something. The boy pleaded and he said he needed the money for school and my aunt relented. I checked outside, we could actually get it cheaper and hopefully the boy really uses the money for school not like buying things like cigarettes. That's another example of my aunt buying something to help out.

We asked the boy if the butterflies were killed to make these key chains, he said no, they collected dead butterflies from the conservatory. Hopefully he's not lying again. I took a fancy on the bright color ones and I got an orange one which after some time looking at it, I was suspicious that they were dyed. There were bright red, green, and yellow ones too. Upon closer inspection, I'm convinced they're dyed because the body was a bit orange too. Either way, I still really like the orange butterfly key chain that I got. As we're leaving I thought we should enter the butterfly museum, but you have to pay to enter what seems to be just a room. Again I feel like once you pay for ticket, you should have access to everything. Yes it's only 5000 IDR (50 cents USD), but it's the principle of it. In the end we decided not to enter it, I'm not sure if the foreign couple we saw as we're walking in the same direction would go in or if they would feel incensed about it too.

After the short visit in Bantimurung, we went straight to the airport. We arrived way early. Tried to ask if we could get to an earlier flight, but was told we have to pay. If an airline doesn't pay us when the flight is delayed, why do we have to pay them if we want to get on an earlier flight when there are seats available? Tell me where is justice in this world?! Stupidly we just waited at the ground floor of the airport instead of going to the second floor where the gates are, where it is much much nicer than the first floor. The airport is new and it's really nice. Anyways, so that's pretty much it, our trip to Tana Toraja, first time in Sulawesi. I'm really glad that I got to do this and had the family with me :) For pictures from the trip to Lake Tempe and Bantimurung Waterfall, please go here.

Other things worth writing. My brother is a very generous tipper. There was discussion about how much we should tip our driver and he got annoyed with our cheapness that he said he would take care of it. He also pointed out that it's better to tip daily because that would make the driver happier in serving us. Another nice things about domestic tourists like my mom and aunt is that they're more caring on people like the driver and guide, always making sure they have things to eat. Day 1 in Toraja, they even invited the driver and guide to have dinner with us, alas they're too shy to join in. Then there's the language realization. Indonesians generally speak the local language except for people in Jakarta who I think speak Indonesian the most. Everyone we meet can converse in Indonesian but I realized that sometime they took times to compose what they're going to say and I wonder if we sounded too fast for them. There were times when I tried to simplify my question just like when I would speak in a simpler english with people here in Singapore who's not fluent in English. Also one time I saw a sign encouraging people to speak Indonesian first and foremost. Then in Sengkang, I saw that on the street signs, below the word in roman alphabets, there's the word in symbols, in what I think is the Buginese language. The characters look triangular. Seriously Indonesia is so diverse. Mom said that she saw in Toraja there were local language with unique symbols too, but I didn't see any. Other things that I noticed in Toraja that I perhaps haven't written is that some of the people I met have this very light brown eyes that it's kinda mesmerizing for me. Then there are a lot of skinny dogs around. I think they're more like guardians of the area rather than pets. It can be rather disturbing seeing these skinny dogs. Many of them were sleeping lazily too. That being said, one morning I saw a group of dogs chasing something, I think one of them may have gotten a rat in the paddy field.

Let me end this post with my last morning in Jakarta. Dad got home and got me noodle or what we call in Indonesian as bakmi. It's your usual minced pork (I think) noodle and he also got some wonton too and though he forgot to bring the soup which caused me having to eat this noodle in a rather dry mode, it tasted heavenly. It was really really good and moment like this make me think how I feel quite miserable with the food in Singapore. There's no one food I will miss dearly when I leave this place and there's so many that I miss in Indonesia, even this simple noodle which is perhaps not even the best in the area it was sold.

In my last morning, my mom also asked me to go to the bank, BCA, to get a new bank book. My dad brought me there and I was surprised that the security officer outside was holding umbrella and shielding people from the hot sun, though he didn't offer his service to us. Is it because we came in a bike? He was alone though. Anyway then inside of course everyone were so friendly and cheerful and it can be overwhelming for me having to deal with all this nicety when I am not feeling chatty (which perhaps happens way too often, me not being social). The security guards inside the bank and other staffs were saying good morning and asked what we wanted to do so that they can point us to the correct counter. As I was waiting, the office boy (man to be more precise) came around to all customers and offered us water! His boss was even asking him to offer me because the boss thought I wasn't offered since I didn't take any when the staff came around the first time. I was stunned and I wonder if one day they would upgrade and offer us snack too, donuts will be great! Then as we're leaving of course we had to hear many of the staff saying thank you. I told this story to mom and she said that it's not the case in the bank near the market where she works. Perhaps it is depending on branch, but the nice service like this just makes me feel like how it's can be super duper nice in Indonesia. Just last week, I had to deal with a really rude girl in the photo developing store. She was so rude that I had to say forget it and walked away. It took me some time to get over it and how I wish I can just punch people. The next day, I went to a different store and the lady there wasn't like extraordinarily friendly or anything, but she helped me and listened to my instruction, she also helped another customer, and she just doing her job made me feel like she's the nicest person in the world after the treatment from the girl the day before. Point is things like this make me feel it could be so different in Indonesia. Alright, enough lamenting and it's been a long post. See you when I see you. Take care peeps!

:) eKa @ 10:00:00 PM • 0 comments

Indonesia - Tana Toraja Day 2

Day 2 in Tana Toraja was spent first at Pasar Kerbau (Water Buffalo Market). It's not only for buffalo actually, it's a real market with produces like vegetables and other things, but we only went to the buffalo and pig field. The interesting part about this market is that the market changes places everyday to a different town and will only come back after 6 days and we're lucky to be in the area when there is market. The field where the buffaloes are is very very big, we didn't go all the way through. From what I could see, it seems it's the space of a soccer field. I'm not sure it it extends more at the back and there are many many many buffaloes! It's a real tourist attraction. I saw the french group from lunch in Pare Pare and many other foreigners. Buffalo is actually not cheap. Well there are those which is below 100 million IDR (~ 8,274 USD), but the average good one I think will average out to around 200 - 400 million IDR (~ 16,500 USD - 33,000 USD), while the really good ones shoot up above 500 million IDR. The one that definitely can fetch a good price are the ones with pinkish white skin (like a pig) and also black, like this. Buffaloes who also win in fights can also fetch a good price. While buffalo that's all white is like tainted meat. The guide said people will just slaughter it and sell it at the market, but the Torajan believe it's not good for them to consume it, they would get rashes. Now, buffaloes sacrifice is important for a funeral ceremony, the guide told us that for Torajan royalty, they would need to sacrifice at least 24 buffaloes! This is not including pigs and chickens. I googled and for average people, they would need like 8-10 buffaloes. Still it's a lot of money. You may need to sell a house or land to pay for all this. It's a big affair a funeral ceremony in Toraja.

I am pretty sure there is no audit in this market, like no one counting how many buffaloes are sold and the total money changing hands, but I think they could be in billions of IDR, maybe even millions of USD. All these buffaloes just for local consumption. Yes funeral is a big family event, but it's still curious how these people, common people, have that much spending power. Another interesting thing for me was that this market is over by 2 pm, I wonder how the logistic is to bring all these animals and get them prepared for the market. Also the logistic on getting them all out. It must be so chaotic. I didn't take many pictures because I was focusing on not stepping into the dung. It smelled of course, but none of us was as troubled about it as was my aunt. She struggled so we didn't linger long. We went to the pig section and my mom was amused that all of them were black pigs. There was an area where the pigs were tied in bamboos, I guess so that they don't run around and buyers could inspect them better and I have to say it's quite sad hearing the pig squealed in there. It sounded like they're so stressed out and I would be too if I am in that situation. The interesting thing is the pigs are sold by the meters. So I guess the longer they are, the more money they could fetch. Side note, on one of the drive, we saw a man just casually walked a pig like one would walk a dog. Our guide told us that the pig is a male and it's very common that the owner of the male get a call to another house so that the male can mate with a female. It's very funny seeing that man walking the dog. Anyway this pig below was in a small pen with the others, it looked concerned, didn't it?

After that, we went to another cluster of Tongkonan houses where we saw a grandma weaving under her lumbung (barn). I really couldn't understand how weaving works, how one does the pattern. That time the grandma was weaving a simple cloth without any pattern it seemed and I saw that there are 2 groups or boards (I don't know what you call it) with different colors and she inserted a thread in each iteration and somehow a cloth will be weaved. Unclear explanation? My point is it seemed there were 3 groups of threads with different colors for the fabric she's weaving. I'm really curious about this and I wish I can get lessons on how this works. Anyway after that we actually tried to go to a wedding party or a funeral, I'm not sure what. However as we were nearing, the car couldn't go in anymore because there were already too many cars inside and when the guide proposed we walk, my aunt and mom were not keen on doing that. I think there could have been many tourists in there. Anyway so we decided to just go straight to Batutumonga which is higher up in the mountain. I took motion sickness pill because I know there will be sharp turns all the way, so I kinda slept on parts of the journey. I kinda fell asleep quite a lot during many of the drives, so I missed out on seeing interesting things. As we were nearing Batutumonga we saw long stretch of paddy fields. Again too bad we're there after harvest in the dry season, so what we saw were many brown areas. We then arrived at a homestay which was quite cool. The rooms were in a form of a small tongkonan. There were foreign tourists too there and that amazed me. Maybe it's not a big deal for them, but for me thinking of the fact that they braved long flights from wherever they are to get to Indonesia and another flight to Makassar, then long drive perhaps in local buses to get to Toraja and then to Batutumonga, it's a very very long journey. They're willing to do all this to be there. Amazing and kinda humbling when you think about it.

We stayed for awhile sitting on big rocks looking at the view then we found out that inside that big rocks are used for funerals and there are bodies inside it, but I think it's alright for us to be sitting there, hopefully. After that it's another long drive back to Rantepao, the area of Toraja we're staying in. Had lunch and I decided we should go to Bori before we end the day. Chose Bori because it's actually in the itinerary. What interesting about Bori is that in addition to carving spaces inside big rocks to store the bodies, the people also erect megaliths for a funeral ceremony. Some of the megaliths were short and small were pretty tall and the space is not very spacious so it's amazing that they could put these stones in and not knock existing megaliths. I don't know how they manage to do it, amazing. Nearby we saw one megalith was in the process of being shaped, maybe to be used for a funeral ceremony in the near future. We also saw a tongkonan being built nearby. The workers use bamboos to erect the structure. These people pretty sure don't have a degree in engineering, but the fact that they know how to build the roof and make a sound and safe house is amazing.

Here we kinda managed to convince my aunt who didn't want to go up and see the burial rocks to wait at the bottom, so my mom came along to see the big rocks being used to store the bodies. These are like the ones we sat on on Batutumonga. Each rock belongs to a family and they built like little windows for each of the body or perhaps bodies. Family members who visit sometime left things like cigarettes or beers or other things in the little windows. By the way the Torajan are usually buried (can you say bury when no burying involved?) with many of their belongings like their best clothes and their jewelries. So it's like they prepare their life, their savings for their funeral ceremony. The guide told stories of a family member who refused to wear the one good clothes he had because he wanted to wear it for his funeral. It sounds silly, but you know like the phrase of how wearing your Sunday best, maybe these people just want to be on their very best when they meet the Lord :)

Alright, that was the end of our Toraja adventure. Many hours were spent on the road. We didn't explore every bit of Toraja as I would have liked to but I'm really glad to have my mom and aunt there. Again for photos, please go here here. We still had another day in Sulawesi before we left, will try to write about that adventure soon.

:) eKa @ 1:14:00 PM • 0 comments

Indonesia - Tana Toraja Day 1

So last week I went back to Indonesia. Didn't really spend much hours at home. The purpose of the visit was to go to Tana Toraja. It was planned and booked before my uncle was admitted to the hospital for the first time. The one going were to be me, mom, my aunt, and brother. As his condition worsen, I did wonder if this was going to happen. Dad was saying that we should cancel the whole thing and there was a point that mom said she and my aunt would have to cancel on this. I understood the situation but I couldn't help feeling slightly sad about it and I thought I'm such a bad person for feeling that way. As the day of the trip coming closer, I was bracing to do the trip only with my brother. I don't know how that would have worked out. Then my uncle died 1 week before the day of the trip. Mom and the family managed to settle his funeral pretty fast and after that she said it's a go. My uncle was buried on a Saturday and we went on the trip on a Thursday. It sounds heartless? Perhaps not, people deal with death differently. My family seems to be the type who think proceeding with normal programming to be the best way to deal with this. My mother stayed longer with my aunt after the funeral to help out but there were relatives who went to work the next day. There are apparently still some tradition being observed like they're doing weekly prayers which I don't know will last how long and mom has been participating in it. We managed to get back in time for mom to participate on the second one this week. I was already back to Singapore so I didn't join in. I didn't manage to see how my aunt is doing. Truth be told, I don't even see much of my dad. I arrived in Jakarta last week Wednesday and by Thursday dawn we're on our way to Makassar. 4 am Jakarta is not all quiet. Seriously it's like Jakarta never sleeps. There were more cars at the road than I expected and the airport was as busy as it was during daylight. I was seriously in awe. Indonesia doesn't strike you as being particularly hardworking, but it's like there are always people working in Jakarta at any hours.

By the way, I didn't keep a journal on this trip because this is a rare opportunity travelling with my mom so I didn't want to spend the free time writing away. As such, I have forgotten many details of the trip and have to google to cross check things. In the early stages of planning, I thought of this trip like my version of Appa Odiga but it's with mom, so it should be called Eomma Odiga. I even thought mom will have boiled potatoes like she usually does when she goes on trips, that would be so like Appa Odiga, but alas she didn't do it on this trip. People asked me why I chose Toraja. Well from travelling overseas a few times, I began to feel like I should visit more places in Indonesia. You see I have visited more places in Italy than I have in Indonesia. That's a pity no, especially when there are many foreigners who are so eager to explore Indonesia, like for example the Italian dad I met in Cappadocia who said he had gone and explored many places in Indonesia before he has the 2 toddlers. Indonesian have this national song whose first lyric says, Dari Sabang sampai Merauke (from Sabang to Merauke), which are places on the most eastern and western of Indonesia. From the story, it seems that's exactly what that Italian dad did. So it's kinda embarrassing no if foreigners know your country more than you? So this is like the other side of the life list paper, explore more of Indonesia. I am starting slow. Tana Toraja is one of those unique place which is featured in travel articles and tv programme. I am just beyond curious and I am thankful I got to do this. Double thankful because my mom and aunt were there. Not sure how I would have hold up with my brother alone.

Tana Toraja is located in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and the nearest airport is Makassar and by near it's not that near. It's still 8 hours drive away. I decided to use a travel agency to handle our trip. It has a 5 days / 4 nights itinerary which I quite like so I chose that. We got a car and driver and a guide for 2 days in Toraja. The trip didn't follow the itinerary exactly though, so in a way I feel dissatisfied, but considering my aunt is not so keen on seeing burial sites, I guess there's no point in pushing further. Okay backtrack a bit. The flight from Jakarta to Makassar is around 2 hours, enough to make me think how I start to really hate flying. I hate being cramped in such a small place, the woes of being poor and not being able to afford nicer seats. Our flight was 5.55 am Jakarta time and Makassar is 1 hour ahead of Jakarta (the same time zone as Singapore) and so we arrived after 9 am Makassar time. By the way, my mom is like a backpacker. She insisted that all bags to be carry on. That made me quite stressed out with the liquid restriction, but thankfully it seems it's not so strict in Indonesian domestic flights(?). She's also not so fussy about accommodation, so I am kinda being pushed to be more acceptant with things. Anyway, arrived in Makassar, paid the travel guy, met our driver and off we went. 8 hours drive. It's really hot there. Getting out of the airport, my aunt commented that the streets we're kinda stuck in traffic for awhile looked like another place in Jakarta, which is a true observation. Different islands and culture, but things are strikingly similar. It's just Indonesia, we're kinda the same everywhere. A weird realization to have perhaps. I even wonder how we could be so the same when we are distance apart and culturally can be different with different local languages being spoken and different traditions.

First stop was Pare Pare for lunch. The city changes to villages with houses on stilts on each side of the roads. There are many houses, no one is isolated. Another realization that perhaps in Indonesia, though it's big, you can't really find a place with no one around. The only place I have ever been where I felt like there's no one for miles and miles was during one of the drives in Cappadocia. That being said, I am sure that there are places in Indonesia where there aren't people for miles and miles around (I think??!?). Anyway, getting to Pare Pare we passed a coast with fishing villages around. The sea looked really nice and blue. We didn't stop though so I don't have any picture of this. Entering the eating place, there were 2 other groups of foreigners having their lunch. There were like 6-10 people in their groups. One of the group is french. This is repeated often, seeing french tourists (they do travel a lot, don't they the French?) and us being the only Indonesian tourists there (well it's not holiday season for Indonesian when we were there). Anyways, lunch was seafood and it was good. Then on we continued with the drive. After some hours, we stopped for tea break at a roadside shop overlooking Buttu Kabobong or also called as Gunung Nona in Indonesian. The same french group was already there. The view from that shop overlooking the mountain was great. We passed by the shop again when we're leaving Toraja. Here my mom and the auntie had their first chance of buying stuff. They bought a local snack, a dodol like thing wrapped in corn husks.

We arrived when it's already dark at our hotel. All were tired. The aunt and mom decided to get a room with 3 beds for us girls and the staff managed to get that for us. Throughout this trip, my brother had been luckily having a room for himself. Dinner was at the hotel and it wasn't amazing. The room was simple and okay, but I don't like the toilet. I sucked it up better because I was there with my mom and aunt, so I didn't feel too devastated. The next day being the early risers that all my family are, we finished breakfast earlier and we walked around our hotel while waiting to set off for the day at 9 am. We could see mountains all around. In fact Toraja is like a highland surrounded by mountains all around. It's not cold there though, in fact it's rather hot. Indonesia itself is having a rather dry hot season right now. There are sawah (paddy fields) surrounding our hotel. We saw water buffaloes in one of the sawah and there were also ducks having their breakfast.

We then met our guide and our first stop was to Londa. We saw a prize winning (from bull fighting) water buffalo there and it is big, beautiful, and black and it cost a whooping 800 million IDR or around 66,225 USD. More on this in my next post. Londa is a cliff where there are coffins being put in the caves and on the cliffs. My auntie didn't want to go in and explore this place which is very strange because she's a strong christian so why did she hesitate? or fear? I am not sure if she's afraid. So it's just me and my brother, with my mom accompanying my aunt. I think my mom would have liked to at least see the cliff up close. This cliff has caves inside it and it's still being used by the Torajans to store the coffins of their loved ones. The Torajans do not bury the deaths, they either put the coffins with the body inside caves, or hang it on the cliffs, or carve storage place inside a big rock. This is the cliffs of Londa overlooking a paddy field. You can't see much details in the picture, but right up to the top there are coffins. It is actually a rather beautiful place.

The royalties get to choose higher places which is the prime estate. It's amazing how they can put the coffins in there. The guide said that they lower it down and there'll be people waiting to push it into the caves on top. The royalties also get to put the tau tau of their family at the balcony. It's very interesting, there were some really old ones which look simple and then there were newer ones (but still old) with more details on the carving and clothing.

Then the guide brought us to explore the caves at the bottom using 2 entrances, on the left and right. He got the help of the worker there with a lantern because the caves are really dark and not lighted up. It's very cramped inside and there were times where we had to duck and bend. Definitely the most challenging caves I have entered, because there isn't actually any walkway and because it's really dark. We saw a French couple who are like my mom's age who didn't use the worker with the lantern, they just used the light from their phone. I don't know if it helped them much and that it's quite daring of them to just explore the inside on their own. I was thinking that my mom really couldn't do this. Inside there were coffins and remains of bones and skulls. I wonder how deep the caves go but I wasn't keen of going deep inside. By the way, if you're wondering, it doesn't smell there. The Torajan do not immediately perform the funeral ceremony for the death. The funeral ceremony requires many animals sacrifice and they need to save up for this. So when someone died, they're preserved with formaldehyde and kept in what they call "rumah adat" which is basically a traditional house designated to house this body which they just call as being sick until they are ready with the funeral ceremony and this can take years.

After that we went to what I think is Kambira, this is to see the baby graves in the tree. Upon entering we saw our first cluster of Tongkonan houses. They are actual houses with people living in it. People who also sell souvenirs and that got my mom and aunt's attention. They also sell vanilla pod coming from their own backyard and that was the first time I saw the vanilla plant. It turns out it's like a vine growing around another plant, in this case, it was climbing up a cassava plant. The lady also told me it's an orchid. Apparently many of them stop growing vanilla because one time the price dropped and people got upset. Other plants that we often saw were chocolate cocoa trees. Anyway the guide gave us explanation of a tongkonan house. The carving design may be different from one house to another but certain elements are the same. Like the first thing on top is the picture of hen / rooster which symbolizes justice. Then there will be the sun and the buffaloes. We're allowed to get up to the house and explore around. I didn't go in because I feel bad because it's an actual house people live in. I just saw that the inside are divided into 3 sections. Very simple for this family. My mom and aunt got up and went to the front section, popped their heads from the window, and then I took their picture. The houses are very interesting with all the carvings. I asked the guide if the wood were carved first then assembled or the other way around. They were assembled first and then carved and painted. It took like 3 months for a few carvers to carve the entire house. Amazing.

Since again auntie wasn't interested in seeing the baby graves, it's just me and my brother. The Torajan babies who died before having teeth were buried inside the tree. So the people carve like little spaces inside the tree and put the baby in and then cover it with twigs and such. They look like little windows. The guide said the tree is like the same species of banyan tree and it's chosen because the sap is white like milk and putting the baby inside is like putting the baby in a womb. Over a really long time, the twigs will fall off and the space will be fully sealed and you could only see a faint outline of a rectangle in the tree.

Then we went to lunch. A topic that is more agreeable to my aunt who inquired on the local specialty. The guide took us to a small warung (small roadside eating place) which serve pa' piong (meat cooked inside a burned bamboo) and pork satay. We ordered the pork pa' piong, grilled fish (mom's obsessed with grilled fish), and also the pork satay because I am curious since it's definitely different from my family's pork satay. Everyone seems to be excited about eating pork as if we do not already eat pork almost everyday. It's very refreshing though to see stores openly have BABI written on their signs. Pork serving establishment in Jakarta do not seem to be able to advertise that openly. My mom said even in North Sumatra in areas where there are many Christians, they also couldn't be that open. Honestly, I say everyone should just be able to write BABI in big signs if they are serving pork and if it's halal, go and put big signs too. Fair play for all, no? By the way, most of Torajans are Christians. The one with this unique funeral customs are Christians. In many cultures in Indonesia, Indonesians can reconcile their faiths with ancestral traditions. Even with the muslims, the javanese muslims like the sultanate in Central Java for example still practice tradition which one may feel to be not quite Islamic. Anyway, I didn't like the black looking pork pa' piong because it contains the fat part, under the skin thing which I don't eat unless it's already reduced to become pork rind. The pork satay on the other hand was amazing. My mom was amused because it's big. It reminded me of Turkish chicken kebab because the cut is that big, but this pork satay is still using wood skewers. It was reddish orange because they put chili, so it has a tinge of spiciness. It's unique in that the meat was alternated between the fatty skin part which I don't eat and the lean meat. Too bad we only ordered one and it came later, only after we kinda finished with our meal. We're also given one big glass of Torajan alcoholic drink which I only took a sip because it's not looking appetizing for me, but the rest kinda finished it off :D I would describe the taste to be like cassava tapai water, which is strange. Anyway, from the window of the warung, you can see pretty beautiful sawah which is looking green and a little stream. It's the dry season in Indonesia so many paddy fields are actually empty. In many of them, you can see the cracked mud ground. This one was looking a bit green though.

Last stop for the day was Kete Kesu, another little village with many Tongkonan houses. By the way, in front of each Tongkonan house, there is a rice barn of what we call in Indonesian as lumbung. I think it is used to store other produces other than rice. It's very interesting for me to finally be able to see a lumbung and not be it just a concept that I don't experience. You know it's a lumbung because it's smaller and there's no stairs going into it. In another village, the lady who lives there told me that it's a taboo to leave your lumbung empty. I can understand it can be bad luck. So they always have a little something and though they look run down with plants growing on the roof, the lady told me that rain water does not go into it. My brother managed to got up and see what it's like inside it in one of the villages. The ladder that was used was this one bamboo which have little hole in it for you to put your foot in. Anyway, in Kete Kesu there are another type of burial method like this one where they built this interesting container with an egg like face. There are shelves inside this container and they can put many bodies of the family.

It started to drizzle a bit. So we went into a shop where my mom and aunt shopped quite a lot to the point that the lady dressed them in traditional accessories and sarong and we took picture of it. When the drizzle stopped and they're still shopping, I went up to see more of the coffins by the cliff. Here they kinda hammered wooden stake on the cliff and place the coffin on top of the stakes. The guide lifted one of the coffin and showed it to me. Apparently new body would just be put inside the same coffin, so you see many bones. By the way, I only saw bones never remains that still looked like a body. For the coffins on the stakes some of it was rotting away and the bones would just fall off. It's not a big deal for the people there. They most probably just arrange the fallen skulls and bones on top of any coffin. Kinda too bad that I didn't go up all the way to the top. The stairs were quite easy to walk on. That was day 1. Dinner was at this restaurant that served local cuisine and it involved chicken pa' piong which was better than the pork and another local specialty, babi pamerasan, which is pork which appeared black because it's cooked with buah keluak. For pictures, you can go here. I will try to write day 2 soon.

:) eKa @ 6:21:00 PM • 0 comments

Heartbreaking Weeks

My uncle died yesterday. The uncle that I mentioned to be terribly sick in the last post. I thought it was tragic. It all happened pretty fast and heartbreaking. He died like 1 month from the day he decided to go to the hospital because he's really not feeling well with what I think is digestion issue. It turned out he had stomach cancer. This writing may not be accurate since I wasn't there to get first hands news. The doctor said it's not operable and it had spread to his lungs. I did ask my mom if they should get another opinion, that was one very heartbreaking conversation with my mom because I think she cried. Hearing your parents cry I think is more heartbreaking that a parent hearing their child cry. Based on the little information I had from that conversation with mom, I spent the next day googling about cancer and stuff. It's very sad because the awareness and education of cancer in Indonesia is not very high and so cases like my uncle is discovered all too late. I also began to wonder if the technology to really help these cases just doesn't exist in Indonesia. In my phone call with mom, she posed a question if human can live without a stomach. Based on watching things like Grey's Anatomy, I thought it's a possibility, but I didn't answer her question based on knowledge found in TV. It is possible by the way and it's one of the treatment for stomach cancer, but that is when the patient is not in the advanced stage. Since my uncle's lungs had been affected, I assumed he's in the final stage and there's no cure for that and from what I gathered the treatment is palliative chemotherapy. I have never seen anyone I know going through chemo but from stories it seems pretty rough and it does make me wonder why one would go through that if it's not going to make any difference.

So my uncle got discharged last Saturday and he died yesterday. As I am writing this, I am trying not to cry. It's all very tragic. My mother met him the evening before his death and she also spent the weekend in his house. When the family got the verdict from the doctor, they feel at least it's not as sudden as my other uncle who just went into a coma after he fell. In a way, everyone had time to prepare, but as the past few weeks have been, it's all just very very heartbreaking. I tried to think of what memories I have with this uncle. When I was young and he and my aunt didn't have any children yet, I used to stay over at their house during holiday. I was like their practice child. I remember going to a movie with him, the two of us, but I couldn't remember what movie it was and if we watched the whole thing. Then I remember walking back to his house, we're passing through a cemetery and he told me not to run on top of the graves. That's a weird memory to have because I am not sure if there's even a cemetery around his house, but I think it really happened because how can a child conjure such a weird distinct memory. Perhaps the last interaction I had with him was last year (I think) during Chinese new year where I sat in his new house while everyone else were in the old house. It was just me and him watching his cable, I couldn't remember what conversation we had but I remember him telling me that my dad would love cable tv.

Really trying not to cry. I feel like I am always distanced and removed from the happenings at home because simply there's the literal distance. It does make me feel bad that it's like I don't feel more and also because I'm not there to help out. In my 14 years in Singapore, I have had grandpa died, 3 aunts from my dad's side, and now 2 uncles from my mom's side. Maybe I missed out on some people too. I didn't go home in any of those moments. My only adult experience in having to face death and funeral straight on is of Astley's. There are moments where I wonder if all these years of being alone here have caused me to be more and more heartless. It's selfish to feel this way, it's just being here I am spared from seeing my mom and other aunts and uncles in mourning. Again, seeing your elders cry is really really hard even though I know they are really really strong people mentally.

:) eKa @ 9:59:00 PM • 0 comments

Hazed & Confused

Hi guys, how are you doing? I haven't been doing well these past weeks. More like a mental issue than physical though physically my body is also rather weird these days. The title comes from a Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I just ate 1 pint of Hazed and Confused Core. Is it wise to do so? I would say no. Ingesting that much sugar in one go doesn't seem to be a good idea. I'm having a bit of a headache now. Anyways I rationalize it by telling myself that I have been thinking about it for some time and I have been in a sad stressed mood for some time now. Along with that bad decision, today I also bought so many sugary things, this is despite of me having some worry that I may have started to have diabetes :'( I don't want to face this if it's true and so I have been avoiding taking a medical check :( All in all, despite of me feeling this bad, it can't be compared to one of my uncles who's really sick right now. It's really worrying that I went to the temple after class today to say a prayer for him. I really really hope the worst will not happen to him, that the doctor will have a good plan and can execute it, and he'll get through this.

On other mundane news. Because of class, I haven't been going to the cinema, but some weeks ago, I managed to drag myself to watch The Maze Runner. I like the maze mystery theme, but didn't like the ending when the survivors just simply exited out into the modern world. Watching it, I was thinking of how some of the boys whom we watched when they're just little boys, like Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, have grown to be young men and I really felt old because of this. Similarly, I always feel that way whenever I see Freddie Highmore.

On books, I finished reading Le Petit Nicolas by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé. It's actually a really thin book and yet I took quite a long time. I really enjoyed it. Was looking for another french book, but I couldn't find anything that I fancy when I went to Kinokuniya. I wanted to buy something by a french writer rather than translated works, but I don't know which writer is a good one and I realized something about me, I don't fancy straightforward love story or perhaps any love story for that matter. I think it has something to do with the fact that I am perpetually single :( So anyway, right now I am reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Didn't know what book I should read next, so I just bought this simply because it won the Pulitzer Prize this year. I'm kinda confident that I can finish this before the year ends and so that would make me complete 8 books this year. I also bought Moby-Dick by Herman Melville to fulfill that goal of reading more classic works, but I don't know if I can finish it by this year. So far I found that The Goldfinch to be not that fluid for me, so I am moving quite slowly. I haven't progressed much so I don't know if I like it.

Watching the Asian Games closing ceremony now because I want to watch the Indonesian part of the performance, since Jakarta will be hosting the next Asian Games. I don't know how the committee came up with that decision, since Jakarta is chaotic. We have an ambitious governor but he has like only 3 years left and while I have seen many comments of people supporting his tough stance, there are racists extremists who's ever so ready to make sure he's having a hard time, for example by staging a violent protest. I think there are many Indonesians who don't understand what being racist means. Even if they do, I think many think it's alright to discriminate and any attempt to teach it's not so will be deemed as imported value that does not necessarily fit with what our country is all about :( The state of Indonesian politics right now is really really bad. While people in Hong Kong are staging protest because they have to accept what I call as a filtered (or perhaps censored) democracy, in Indonesia recently our rights to vote officials like for the governor post have been snatched away from us. The parliament will choose for us, so we can kiss goodbye to all the good people who perhaps want to run but didn't want to go through the corrupt parties and all the drama. When the law was passed, all I could think of was how "jahat" (= bad, mean) the people in the parliament are. They shamelessly do all this for the sake of their own power and position and for spite, not for the good of the people. Our current sitting president is also such an ass that I felt quite sad that I voted for him for his second term. He's saying that he's sad about this law but people from his party in the parliament walked out during the vote and the good people lost the vote. Well they may have lost anyway even with the people who walked out voting against the bill, but if they had given their support earlier and be more outspoken about how bad the bill was, perhaps we wouldn't have been in this grave situation. I'm still holding for hope that the righteous people will be successful in repelling this law.

Alright I don't have anything else to share. Hope your life is great. Ciao!

:) eKa @ 6:53:00 PM • 0 comments

Non Important Life Update

Hello guys! How is it going? I haven't been writing because there's nothing interesting to write about. Like its predecessor, this post is most probably not gonna be interesting either. However writing exercise is important, at least for me. So today I'm not gonna be that lazy. Let's start with my 6th book this year which I finished reading this week, The Orphan Master's Son Adam Johnson. The novel won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and I chose it because Oshie was gushing about it. It is a really good book, though I am not as taken by it as Oshie who said he's haunted by it after finishing it. It tells a story of the life of a guy in North Korea. There are only 2 chapters in the book and it started to get really interesting for me in chapter 2 which I thought was beautifully structured as well. The story in this chapter was told forward by 3 different sources, one of it was from the loud speakers which apparently exist everywhere in North Korea to transmit propaganda and announcement. I wonder if these loud speakers really exist and people really mustn't get rid of it. Anyway, I thought the story from these loud speakers was told in flashback but towards the end we found out it's happening at the same time as the other 2 sources and it was a nice surprise for me. It is very strange of me to find a structure of a book to be as amusing as the story. I don't know, I like clever stuff? Anyway the way the author wrote about life in North Korea is really remarkable that I wonder how much of it is really true. I know the Japanese kidnapping are true, the atrocious labor camps are true though perhaps the methods are different than what mentioned in the book, but there are things that I wonder if they really exist like the autopilot machine and the state giving replacement family member. The author did manage to visit North Korea when he was writing the book, but obviously he only saw what's being presented to him, but it's enough for him to note that life in Pyongyang is perhaps much much different than the rest of North Korea. I never thought of that. So it's always good when a book opened your perspective and made you learn new things. Another surprising discovery for me was that the pride Kimilsungia orchid is actually originally from Indonesia. Anyway the ending of the book was sad for me. It's strange that as the story progresses you know how the ending would be with the clues you are given, you don't know how, but you know the way it will end and yet you still feel sad when it's finally written down and you reach those pages :( It's really a curious thing to see how long North Korea can stay the way it is.

So right now I am reading Le Petit Nicolas by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé. It's a french book. Got it when I suddenly remembered that Kinokuniya has a french section. It's a children book, it consists of short stories with a bit of illustration. I actually know Le Petit Nicolas before this book because I watched its cartoon (which is beautifully made) in YouTube when I was preparing for DELF B2 and that's the reason I got this book. So far obviously I don't know many words, but I am able to understand the story. In fact I'm quite surprised that I'm able to read it with less problem than I anticipated. I don't use a dictionary reading this because it will just take a long time, but when I remember words that I didn't know, I do look for them in the dictionary once I finish a story. The stories are about the little boy Nicholas and his friends and the kinda trouble they get into. Pretty cute.

Next Saturday would be my last Japanese class in this term. We're completing 10 weeks. Pretty fast and a struggle it has been. We had our last hiragana dictation today and surprisingly I didn't make any mistake. I didn't do any mistake in all the dictation tests and it surprised me because I thought I would eventually flounder, but hey I made it. I have signed up for the next term. This whole experience has been a demoralizing one with me often feeling frustrated, but the usual me could not just give up. It seems we're learning katakana in the next term. I wonder how my brain gonna handle it. I couldn't even read properly in hiragana that I had to google about the possibility of having dyslexia in Japanese. Perhaps it's me not getting used to it that I am reading like a child who is stumbling in every syllable. It's frustrating because I didn't recall being this way when I was young learning how to read. I confirmed this with my mom, the young me saw a word and just read it without having to struggle sounding the syllable to read the word in its entirety and so this new experience of being so incapable is hard for me to reconcile with.

That's pretty much my life so far. Gonna go home next month for a few days, finger crossed I'll have interesting stories then. Hope you're having a more glorious time in your side of the world :)

:) eKa @ 7:17:00 PM • 0 comments

Going into the (Dark) Cloud

What's your complain now Eka? Well last weekend I was badly stressed out that I didn't sleep and as such I had a bad headache on Saturday evening. I was popping pills in the span of like 3-4 hours which was okay according to the panadol that I was taking, but who knows? I am still here writing. It's all because on Friday morning my phone's screen couldn't light up. I switched it off in the hope that it just needed to be restarted, but then it refused to wake up. I waited again, took out the battery, waited, but it just couldn't start. The whole day I was basically not able to concentrate much and yet there were things that required my attention :( I had hope that perhaps it just needed to be charged but I also thought that it's time to get it replaced. So I quickly bought a new phone. Been using Nokia all my life and the strange me stick to a brand without reasonable logic. So I didn't browse around, I knew it would be Nokia again and I chose the cheapest Lumia out there. Simply because this is unplanned expenses and no I don't need fancy things. My old phone, E72, was great and many people didn't think it was smart, but it's smart for me. A lot of time a tool is only as great as the person wielding it. My old phone could be used to call, send texts, browse the Net, be an alarm clock, remind me of things to do and that's pretty much what I need.

Anyway the new phone Lumia 525 uses a micro sim and my dear sim card which has been in my possession since my early days in Singapore is not. Pause for a moment to reflect that I have been using the same sim card for close to 14 years. Anyway that was another arrrgghh moment for me. So gotta go to Singtel and asked for a micro sim with the same number. I had to pay S$ 38. Got home, tried to switch on my phone while charging it, it didn't work :'( Put the new sim card into the new phone, as expected no contacts data were there and in that moment it occurred to me that I only memorize 3 phone numbers in my head, my own, my house's phone and my aunt's house's number in Jakarta. Technology has rendered us useless without them. I was so stressed out. Try repeatedly to switch on the phone, sometime after waiting some time. One time it worked and I was so happy, but then it couldn't stay awake long enough for me to follow the instruction to transfer data through bluetooth and after it died, it just refused to wake up again. There was a time, it was awake and I carefully noted down the important information like some pin and password I stored there. Don't freak out, these are pin and password to non-important stuff and there's no identifier which pin and passwords these belong to, but yes it's still bad to do this. So anyway, this happened from Friday evening all the way to Sunday morning. I had one crappy weekend. Sunday morning after much praying, I managed to switch it on. I let it charge for a while, not sure if it's charging from the electric cable or the usb connection, either way I let it charge for a while and very carefully so as not to make sudden movement that could kill it, I did a back up through Nokia PC suite. It managed to stay awake long enough for it to complete. Praise God, Jesus, and the universe!

So then I had the backup but then there's no way to put it into the new phone. Both are Nokia but there's no instruction I could find to do this through the PC suite software. Maybe I didn't look hard enough. What I found were to install a software that could read the back up file and I did that. It was another glorious moment because I could see everything and export everything and I learn a new thing. The text messages lost its contact name, so there are just number. I guess that happens because I have activated the new sim in my new phone? However there were still the contacts intact, name and number matched. There were also other contacts which I think came because once I used msn messenger in my old phone. So all in all with the right software you could still dig in into what's inside your phones despite of the sim card being deactivated. Isn't it scary to think what can happen with your phone if it goes to the wrong hand? Anyways, we're not done. I have all that, how do I put it to the new phone. Lumia being a windows phone perhaps I should have explored the possibility of importing these contacts through my Microsoft account, but I didn't think much about it and just went to the first solution I found which was to transfer all the vcf files to Google and then link that Google account into the phone. After much struggle to format the combined data correctly, I made it happen ladies and gentlemen! I was super duper happy and relieved and felt really REALLY thankful to God. Now that I think about it, I am not sure that I could do the same through my outlook account. However for the rest, like some text files that contained the said important information like pin and password, I did in the end choose to use the sky drive. Linking this back to the title, everything is in the cloud now, which will make it easy for me the next time such unfortunate event happens to me again, but it also makes me uneasy about it. All those personal information. Someone somewhere just your typical IT guy could just get a hold of these things and then paste it on some web for the whole world to see like what have happened before that passwords of many people are appearing on the net. Your data don't seem so sacred anymore, that is the way of the world now. Who knows how many of my contacts have been syncing their phone to whatever Google or other accounts they have and my phone number and my name has been floating around somewhere in the cloud. It's funny to think that I often roll my eyes when I was told who and who are concerned about putting their data on the cloud and here I am right now feeling not so great myself about doing it. However I really don't see much choice in this moving forward, the technology starts to dictate us, not the other way around :(

So this new phone, well I miss my old phone. There are many things that I can find wrong with this new phone, the alarm will not work if the phone is shut down, there's no blinking light to tell me I have unread messages or a miss call and most annoying of all, this phone like all other "smart phones" requires charging like every 1.5 days. Seriously, I thought we should be more environmentally friendly? I hate this weakness a lot. So yeah, new phone, but I miss my old one dearly. The old phone was like more than 6 years old. I know this because I managed to find photos taken by it dated to 2008. So I guess it's just time for it to die and I am pretty proud of myself for being with it for so long and how awesome it has been serving me. I have grown so accustomed to it that it's hard to move to something completely different. Changes are always hard for me.

Change of topic. Went to Singapore Garden Festival yesterday. It's moving out of Suntec to Gardens by the Bay this year and as the years go, I found myself getting less and less mesmerized by it. I'm not sure if I will make visiting it a must the next time it happens. I guess many of it are like installation arts and that's always hard for me to think what I think about it. That's not to say that there aren't beautiful and interesting things. Also I have to say that whoever designed this in Gardens by the Bay are pretty awesome in erecting all the structures and making the path ways. Singapore is really good at doing this kinda thing.



As usual, there are also arrangements with recycled materials. Some were really smart.

This year there's the miniature garden sections and this one below got me excited because this is the green house in Harry Potter and you can see a bit of Professor Sprout there on the left. I guess those plants are real but they're so tiny. The whole display is like a small window, I think it's like only an A4 size window.

Outside was hot and there were things like this.

The most interesting part in the outdoor exhibition was the learning lab which features plants that give us food and medicine. I kinda stood around the guides who were explaining things to kindergarten kids to learn about some of the things :P Then I ended the day at the Flower dome where they are hosting the orchid sections of the festival.

It's a Tuesday and yet there were so many people and I felt really annoyed at having to queue. It's not the Gardens' fault, they did their job by controlling the crowd. This time the center walkway is accessible which is great, but the queuing was not. I had to queue twice, one for the walkway and then to go inside the orchid tower which made me feel super disappointed because the inside wasn't amazing at all. The display was small and I didn't think it's really really beautiful as what one of the volunteers said. For pictures from this festival, you can go here.

I ended yesterday by watching The Expendables 3. It was okay I guess. However Sylvester Stallone in scenes with people like Mel Gibson and Antonio Banderas just kinda show how much better they are at acting than he is. They were really good. Then I got really confused with Jet Li. He always gets top billing for this movie but aside from the first one he only appeared a little bit and didn't really do much action. Did they put him in just because of the Chinese market? Anyway funny how I found the first one to be kinda boring and yet I kept on coming back for the sequels and so far they kinda grew on me :D I have to say by they I don't mean the young kids. The Expendables should just stick to their old fashion action because it's where their draw is. Alrighty, that's about it from me. Hopefully in the next post I won't be complaining about much stuff again.

:) eKa @ 8:58:00 PM • 0 comments

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